The Diaries - 01 (53 page)

“Get his gun,”
Nicky muttered through his pain.
 
“Get it
and then shoot both of his fucking knees, just as he has done to me.”
 
He coughed as he struggled for breath.
 
“We’ll get a torch from the tool shed and
cauterize his every wound, just to keep him alive while we experiment on him.”

Marcel held the
pistol on Gage.
 
Gage kept a steady aim
on Nicky.
 
The only man in the room who
wasn’t calm and cool was Nicky.

“
Get
the pistol, Marcel.”

No one moved.

“Move your fucking ass, Marcel, and get that
gun!”

In English, Marcel
answered him.
 
“No, I’m not going to do
that.”

Nicky’s eyes
widened.

 
***

Gage heard Marcel
deny Nicky’s request.
 
What the hell is going on?
 
He knew if he were to go ahead and pull his
own trigger, he could kill Nicky but would die a second later from Marcel’s
bullet.
 
After all the self-encouragement
about not being afraid to die, suddenly, Gage wanted to live more than anything
he had ever desired in his life.
 
A world
without Monika seemed a murky, melancholy place, but it’s all he had known for
such a short time.
 
His mind had been so
bent by Crete, and then revenge, that maybe, once this was over, he might have
a chance to be content with himself again.

With a gentle
nudge from his pistol, Marcel spoke to him.
 
“Monsieur Hartline, do—not—move.
 
If
you do, I will shoot you.
 
Do you
understand?”

“Kill him!” Nicky
screamed in French, utterly indignant, spittle exploding from his mouth.

Marcel nudged a
little harder.
 
“Hartline, do you
understand?”
 

Gage nodded.

Marcel removed the
pistol from Gage’s head and slowly turned it to Nicky.
 
The two men who had spent so many years
together—traveling, eating, working—locked eyes.
 
There was a moment of sharing, and any
observer would have seen the unrestrained hatred in Marcel’s expression.
 
Nicky began to spew curses; Marcel raised the
pistol, aiming it at his head.

“Wait,” Gage said,
touching Marcel’s arm and lowering it.
 
Marcel turned to him with narrowed eyes.

Gage licked his
lips, keeping his pistol on Nicky.
 
“Not
that way.”
 
For a moment Gage turned,
sharing a look with Marcel.
 
“This
man…this…this…
animal
is responsible
for Monika Brink’s death, and I couldn’t even begin to imagine how many
others.”
 
He turned back to Nicky, his
voice icy.
 
“Quick death is far too
decent for him.”
 

Marcel stared at
Gage a moment before he nodded.
 
Nicky
began to yell and scream with more force and intensity, his English and French
unintelligible as they melded together in a torrent of absurd invectives.

Gage retrieved Nicky’s
Steyr
pistol.
 
It had taken the .44 slug just over the trigger and was now
useless.
 
But just in case, he tucked it
into his waistband before using the remote to power off the television.
 
Nicky had screamed himself out, and a
blissful silence settled into the bedroom.

Marcel turned to Gage,
his brows lowering.
 
“What are you
doing?”

“You’ll see.”
 

Displaying total
trust, Gage handed the Auto Mag to Marcel, who held it on Nicky, old west
style, a pistol in each hand.
 
Next, Gage
moved to Nicky, jerking him from the floor and ignoring the pained shrieks.
 
What remained of Nicky’s lower leg dragged
behind him, twisting as Gage pulled him back to the bathroom, hefting him into
the empty whirlpool bath, dropping him there with a thud.
 
Bright red blood contrasted against the
gleaming white of the bathtub.

“Can you stay here
with him?” Gage asked.

Marcel seemed
highly puzzled, but nodded.
 

“And where could I
find a large bucket, and a shovel?”

“Why?” Marcel
asked without contempt.

“Trust me on
this.”

Marcel explained
how to get to the basement.

As Gage limped down
the stairs, he could hear Nicky’s curses, berating Marcel—and his entire family—with
every insult he knew.
 
Gage found the
shovel and the large painter’s bucket, hobbling outside and chiding himself for
not yet doing something to stem his own bleeding.
 
But, the mission came first, and he had
promised himself that he would avenge Monika properly.

And this was a
good plan of vengeance.
 
The mission was
almost complete.

A minute later,
Gage reemerged in the bathroom.
 
Nicky
was now quite pallid, with probably a half-hour to live, at the most, before he
died from shock and a lack of blood.

Marcel peered at
the dark contents of the bucket, his face darkening.
 
“What on earth do you have in there?”

“You’ll see.”
 
Gage turned to Nicky with a calm face.

“There’s no point
in a long speech.
 
I think you’re a beast,
Mister Arnaud.
 
You have no respect for
life and you’re nothing more than a black mark on this earth.
 
You will die tonight, but for my own peace of
mind, I want it to be slowly, and with great pain.”
 
Gage took the Auto Mag from Marcel and blew
Nicky’s other knee in two, making Marcel jump as he had not been prepared for the
roar of the large caliber weapon in the enclosed space.

Nicky shrieked in
pain and again erupted in a torrent of curses.
 
Marcel put fingers in his ears, wiggling them.

Gage took the
bucket and held it over Nicky’s body.
 
“So
Monsieur Arnaud…an animal deserves to die like one.”
 
He dumped the contents of the ant colony on
Nicky, watching with fascination as thousands of European red ants scrabbled angrily
over his bloody body.
 
Nicky’s
indignation was replaced with primal fear and pain as the ants began stinging
his flesh with minute quantities of formic acid, many of them gathering at the veritable
feast of his bloody leg stumps.

And as Gage had
hoped he might, Nicky Arnaud pissed himself.

Gage turned to
Marcel, painfully sweeping his arm to the exit.
 
“Shall we leave him to it?”

Marcel’s eyes were
perfectly round.
 
He watched as Nicky
writhed in the tub like a fish out of water, his screams coming in chirps as
the irritated ants stung him one by one.
 

Just before he
followed Gage, Marcel spit on Nicky and pulled the door shut.
 

***

The water was icy
cool and heaven-sent.
 
The kitchen in
Nicky Arnaud’s mansion was cavernous with its twin hidden refrigerators, a
massive island with a gas stove, and two deep-well sinks on opposite sides of
the cooking areas.
 
It was a kitchen fit
for France’s finest chef and, through the fog of pain, Gage guessed Nicky
Arnaud probably had never cooked anything of merit in his entire life.
 
The screams from upstairs were dying down,
and now the only sound Gage could hear was Marcel rummaging in the
cabinets.
 
He took another sip of the
water and watched as the Frenchman approached with a first aid kit.

Minutes earlier,
after dumping the ants, the adrenaline had ceased to flow and each step
confirmed for Gage that his ribs were indeed broken.
 
It was such that he was unable to take a deep
breath without white hot pain from the shattered bones.

“We must get the
tape very tight,” Marcel said, sounding like a man of experience.
 
A cigarette dangling from his lips, he pulled
on a rubber glove and gently probed Gage’s wound like a field surgeon.
 
He flipped on another light to give himself a
better view, leaning in very close and examining the injury.
 
“It appears to have passed through you
cleanly.
 
Other than the rib, do you feel
any other pain?”

Gage shook his
head, in a form of mild shock over the entire situation.
 
“Just my knee, but that came from diving over
your wall outside.”

“This will likely
hurt a bit.”
 
Marcel liberally coated a
piece of gauze in antiseptic and began swabbing the wound with his gloved
hand.
 
As he worked, he tilted his head
upward.
 
He spoke passable English, heavily
accented.
 
“I’m sure you must wonder why
I did what I did.”

Gage winced as the
gauze penetrated his wound.
 
“I imagine
you’ve been looking for the right opportunity.”

Marcel
nodded.
 
“Nicholas was once a strong
soldier, years ago, but deteriorated rapidly.
 
It had gotten to where his hunger for power had made him forget what his
job was.”
 
Marcel stood and retrieved a
kitchen towel.
 
“
Les Glaives du
Peuple
was formed after
the final German occupation of France, during reconstruction.
 
It was initially developed to provide support
for the worker’s organizations that were being taken advantage of by the
government and ruthless private business.”

“A union
organization that got out of control,” Gage said.

“You’re obviously
thinking of
La
Cosa
Nostra
, and the American mafia.”
 
He
knelt again, swabbing the wound, absorbing excess antiseptic and oozing
blood.
 
“And yes, there are some
similarities.
 
But
Les Glaives
was a more businesslike operation, with far more
credibility than you would expect.
 
Was.
 
The
Unione
Corse
operates in southern and western France, mainly, and we handle the north and
east.
 
But somewhere in the seventies, we
lost our way.
 
Greed supplanted good, and
ruthlessness ruled the day.
 
Men like
Nicky Arnaud became the norm.”

Gage squinted his
eyes at Marcel.
 
“But why wait so long,
and let him kill so many others?”

Marcel raised his
eyebrows.
 
“Maybe you were the, I believe
the word is ‘catalyst’, that I needed.
 
And
today was simply not a good day.”

“The dog.”

“You saw?”

Gage nodded.

“Fitting that an
old crook like me would allow human death for years, but allow a dog to be the
tipping point.”
 
He smiled
contritely.
 
“It was time, Monsieur
Hartline.
 
Nicholas Arnaud needed to be
dealt with.”

Gage tried to take
a deep breath, unable to do so.
 
Marcel
finished what he was doing and, rather than use the medical tape, they used the
remainder of Gage’s duct tape, with Marcel tightly winding it four times around
his body, pressing the gauze tightly against the wound.
 
Gage stood and walked around the
kitchen.
 
It was much better.

“Thank you.”

Marcel
shrugged.
 
“I truly am sorry about what
happened to your lady.”

Gage nodded with
his head bowed before his eyes came up.
 
“Won’t
the police connect what I did in Metz with what happened here?”

“The police will
never
know what happened here.”

“But they may
determine that what I did to Luc and Bruno is related to what happened at
Michel Brink’s book store, and Monika’s death in Frankfurt.”

Marcel shrugged
again.
 
“Probably, but it may take a few
days.
 
Luc and Bruno were not well known,
and the only thing that might tie them to Nicholas would be their car.
 
By then there will be no evidence at all
here.”
 
Marcel chain-lit another
cigarette and offered one to Gage, who refused.
 
“And, as you might imagine, we have many friends in the police
organizations.”
 
He smiled.
 
“I do not expect much in the way of an
investigation.”

Gage put the
pistol onto the granite countertop, somewhat of a gesture.
 
“The car you mentioned, I have it.”

“The Opel?”

Gage nodded.

“Excellent.
 
Keep it.
 
It’s registered to a holding company we own—unless I report it as
stolen, no one will ever know.
 
The
papers should be in the glove box.
 
There
should be no problems, and if you are stopped, they will simply call here.”

Gage delicately
slipped the sweatshirt over his head with some help.
 
“Marcel, what will happen here, really?
 
Certainly men who work with you will come
after me, or the police.”

Marcel lifted the
Auto Mag by the barrel, handing it to him.
 
“As I mentioned, we have relationships that run quite deep, Monsieur
Hartline.
 
As far as anyone will be
concerned, Nicholas has gone away, fleeing for many crimes I’m sure none of us
will ever know about.
 
Everything else
will disappear, just as the unfortunate incident with the book dealer in Metz.”